Twenty cases of COVID-19 occurred on the Sunshine Coast between Dec. 6 and 12, according to data released on the B.C. Centre for Disease Control’s (BCCDC) website.
Last week the Sunshine Coast COVID Physician Task Force reported 19 cases between Dec. 1 and 10 – ahead of the BCCDC’s official figures.
Dr. Daren Spithoff of the Sunshine Coast COVID Physician Task Force said the latest data “reflect a continuing trend of increased cases.”
The increase during the seven-day period is higher than the rates for local health authorities on Vancouver Island and also higher than Powell River and Howe Sound, which saw increases of two and 12, respectively.
Spithoff could not comment on the nature of the spread on the Sunshine Coast compared with other regions but told Coast Reporter through email, “the increased numbers do indicate that we need to be much more careful than we were through mid-to-late November (the time period that is driving our current numbers).”
“Ill-advised gatherings of family and friends” appear to be significant drivers of the increasing case numbers provincially, “and that likely holds true here on the Coast as well,” he said.
BCCDC released numbers for the North Shore Coast Garibaldi region for Dec. 11 to 17. There were 91 cases over that period. That region includes Whistler, Squamish and the North Shore, in addition to the Sunshine Coast.
Rates for the region remain lower than Metro Vancouver.
On Dec. 18 the Ministry of Heath reported 106 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region and 624 new cases in the province for a total of 9,978 active cases. The ministry reported 11 new deaths related to COVID-19 for a total of 724 in B.C.
As of Dec. 17, 2,592 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine have been given to frontline health-care workers. Spithoff said in a recent task force update that a COVID vaccine won’t likely arrive on the Sunshine Coast until the Moderna vaccine is approved, because of the cold storage requirements for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
There have been no reported public exposures at schools or long-term care facilities on the Sunshine Coast. Last week, the respiratory assessment clinic saw an average of nearly three positive cases per day.
